Digital photography eating into marketplace

Since its inception, this column has carried numerous pieces on advances
in digital photography.

Several years ago digital cameras were relatively rare. Their costs
certainly put them out of reach of the ordinary customer. Basic units began
at the $1000 level. Such is not the situation today.

A recently published study reinforces what the typical reader of this
column already knows: digital photography is rapidly eroding the classic
film photography marketplace.

A recently published study of the American marketplace by InfoTrends
Research Group Inc. shows that about one-third of American households with
Internet access had a digital camera at the end of 2001.

More impressive, however, was the projection from the study that almost
two-thirds of Internet households would have digital camera technology by
the end of 2002.

Both figures were obtained from a poll of 1,850 households connected to
the Internet. Results of the poll showed that only 20 per cent of the
households had not yet considered the purchase of a digital camera. Three
per cent of the respondents had not heard of digital cameras.

Michelle Slaughter, InfoTrends’ digital photography analyst, commented
that “the growth in market penetration will have a noticeable impact on the
entire photo industry. Increasingly, digital camera users are using their
digital camera as their primary camera. Already, 19 per cent of digital
camera users say that they no longer use film ... up from 10 per cent of
digital camera users in 2000.”

Here in the Lower Mainland, the trend to digital photography is
unmistakable. Most photo-finishing businesses now offer printing from
digital sources and storage of regular print film data to digital media.

Consider the current advertising flyer for London Drugs here in the
Vancouver area. Long a retailer of standard cameras, London Drugs was one of
the first local commercial outlets to move aggressively into the digital
world. Of 18 cameras listed this week, exactly half are digital. The print
cameras range in price from $90 for a basic autofocus unit to $800 for a
Nikon F80 with a zoom lens.

The digital field is pricier at both extremes. An HP 318 with two-megapixel
resolution and a digital zoom sells for $300 (an optical zoom adds another
$100). Sony and Minolta units round out the top end at well over $1000
apiece. The Minolta Dimage 7, with standard SLR camera styling and an
optical zoom equivalent to that of a 28-200 lens, lists at just under $1500.

Understandably, the full report is only available for purchase,
presumably by manufacturers and others eager to focus their marketing
budgets in this competitive and lucrative field.

In an earlier study by the same firm, “2001 Mass Market Scanner
Forecast,” it was reported that one-third of U.S. households with a PC had
at least one scanner. Worldwide sales were projected to reach US$3.1 billion
for 2001, with North America and Europe each representing 40 per cent of the
total.

It is interesting that the study projects North American scanner sales to
decline at about 1 per cent per annum through 2006, this decline being
offset by an anticipated 4 per cent annual growth rate for the remainder of
the world.

“Scanners continue to be an important part of the digital imaging market,
and according to our U.S. Scanner Penetration Study, 48 per cent of those
who have uploaded a photo to a photo service Web site used a scanner to
create at least some of the images that they posted online,” notes Janet
Kauffman, a research analyst at InfoTrends.

Readers wanting to begin their own research into the digital imaging
field might want to try the exhaustive company links index maintain by
InfoTrends at
www.infotrends-rgi.com/links.

Peter Vogel is a Physics and Computer Sciences teacher at
Notre Dame Regional Secondary School (www.ndrs.org).
Suggestions and comments may be sent via e-mail to
peterv@portal.ca .